Choppy Waters
by illuminata79
Summary: Mick's long overseas journey is nearing its end, but waters aren't as smooth for him and Nell as they had hoped.
1. Mick: Long Journey Home

Mick finally comes back from overseas to find that quite a lot has changed while he was away.

Of course, there is a soundtrack song to go along with this piece, but as the lyrics might be too telling, I have put it at the end of the story.

* * *

My heart gave a joyful little leap when we finally passed Le Minou, as the small lighthouse standing guard over the Brest harbour entrance was called. It had been a rough crossing, and a very long journey, more than four weeks longer than expected.

Just when I had posted a letter to Nell on what should have been our last shore leave in the States, telling her that things had been running very smoothly, passengers were quite satisfied with our services and we should be home in time by February first if we didn't run into bad weather, we returned to the ship to find the crew members who had stayed behind in great turmoil. A fire had broken out in the engine room, the origin of which was not yet clear, and although they had been able to put it out quickly, there had been some serious damage to the machinery that would take a few days to repair.

Passengers and urgent shipments were transferred to another vessel, and it was in fact almost two weeks that the _Liberté_ remained in dock before we had even obtained all the spare parts we required, to say nothing of the repair work which took up another five days.

I hated being stuck. Most of the other junior sailors simply regarded the forced break as a welcome additional leave. They had a good time and drank away most of their pay, and I went with them a few times because there wasn't much else to do, but my heart was in it even less than usual.

About a week into our wait, the first of the crew came down with a nasty stomach bug that quickly spread among the rest, except for a few lucky ones like me who tried to keep things up and running.

When it became clear that the delivery of some crucial part would be delayed for another week, I kept thinking I needed to write to Nell I wouldn't be home for another two or three weeks lest she'd think I had fallen prey to some horrible fate after all, but with three quarters of the crew out with the virus, I simply couldn't find the time. Not with all the cleaning and cooking and nursing me and the handful of others who had been exempt from the illness were doing almost around the clock. I seized any opportunity to sleep for a few hours, be it day or night, and lost track of time completely, quite startled to find more than a fortnight had rushed past since the fire when I finally sat down one late evening to compose a short letter, explaining what had happened and telling her how much I was looking forward to being back home.

The next morning brought the good news that the hard-to-get crankshaft we had been waiting for had arrived and we would be afloat again by the evening. The crew, most of them back on their feet by now, greeted the message with loud cheers, but I didn't produce more than a weak smile. I had awoken with a vague feeling of sickness that had by now developed into full-blown nausea, and the minute I went below decks, the stale thick air made me retch. Obviously, the bug hadn't gone past me after all.

I got myself a bucket from the broom cupboard and staggered back into my cabin, lying down on the bed to stare vacantly into a corner, which was how I spent most of the next two days except for the countless times I hastily reached for my bucket.

Pete and Alex, the boys who shared my cabin, were kind enough to take care of me. I was glad I didn't have to think of anything. They were rather sweet, bringing me lots of tea and bowls of soup I could hardly ever keep down, and once Alex even changed my sheets when I hadn't been able to grab that cursed bucket quickly enough.

At some point I remembered the letter. I knew this would have been my last chance at getting it posted before we sailed, but there was no way I could do it now when I was hardly able to get up.

When Pete said he and Alex and some of the others would be going into town for some final drinks, I asked him to take it with him and find a mailbox. I hoped it was going to arrive before me to save her at least a few days of worrying.

By the time the worst of my affliction was over, we were already making good progress across the Atlantic. The sea was a little choppy but not unpleasantly so. I climbed back on deck for the first time, still a little wobbly in the knees, and held on to the railing while I turned my face into the wind, taking deep breaths of the clear salty air.

_I'm on my way, Nellie, _I thought. _I'm coming home._

Home!

I would have a real home soon, not just a place to sleep and hang my clothes like I'd had in the past years, but my own little house, _our_ own little house, with my lovely Nellie.

"Whatcha grinnin' there, Carpenter, with your peepers closed? Ain't you got nothing to do?"

My eyes popped open with a start only to see Pete's good-natured smirk. I slapped his arm playfully and said, "Mind your own business, Kenyon. Got nothing to do but gawp at other people?"

"Just wanted to make sure you weren't gonna go overboard. You look like death warmed over, Carpenter."

"Thank you very much. Ever the charmer."

We bantered and jostled on in the same manner, until something flat and rectangular slid out of his jacket pocket and fell to the ground.

We both bent to retrieve it but I was faster – and froze when I realized I was holding my own letter in my hand.

Pete dropped his glance and blanched. "Oh gracious God", he groaned. "I forgot to post your letter. Damn and blast it all to hell." He smacked his fist into his other hand helplessly, giving me a contrite look that begged me to wipe the matter aside with a generous wave of my hand.

I couldn't.

"For God's sake, Pete, you idiot, can't you get anything right for once?" I snarled at him, my voice cracking. "What was so hard about finding a mailbox and putting a letter through the slot before you went off to the next tavern?"

"Really, Mick, I …" he began, stammering. He seemed to feel truly and miserably guilty about his lapse, but I just couldn't pretend it didn't matter.

"Spare me your apologies", I said coldly. "You can apologize to Nell when we get back to Brest. She'll have worried herself sick by then." With this, I turned to give the life belts on the railing behind me a thorough inspection, not looking around until I heard Pete shuffle off.

My mood wasn't helped by the announcement the following day that we were going to take a detour via Portsmouth and Saint-Malo instead of returning straight to Brest. I didn't bother to listen to the explanation, I simply walked out at the point of the captain's little speech when he tried to sweeten the bitter pill with the promise of another night of shore leave in Portsmouth.

Another delay. I couldn't believe it. Was this journey cursed or what? I'd probably be home faster if I dived off the railing and _swam _the rest of the way home, I thought angrily.

When we had arrived in Portsmouth and all the unloading was done, I went straight to the next post office to send a telegram to Nell to assure her I was fine and would be home by Friday.

* * *

The _Liberté_ berthed in a grey drizzle, clouds hanging low, foghorns hooting morosely in the distance. The ragged coastline at the mouth of the long port basin was hidden behind a dense, almost tangible shroud of fog, and the people awaiting our arrival on the pier were just blurred little shapes from where I stood on the afterdeck. I was unable to determine if one of them was Nell.

By the time I went off the ship, most of them had disappeared. I looked round, smiling in anticipation, hoping to pick out her familiar shape through the all-encompassing mist of droplets, but the only woman left waiting was a thickset matron in her fifties, peering at me warily from under the brim of her hat.

A figure detached itself from the quay wall as I walked past. I didn't pay much attention to it because it was too tall to be of any importance to me, but then there was a firm hand on my arm and an unfamiliar voice addressing me. "Mick!"

I turned and was quite bewildered to find myself eye to eye with Loïc. He had grown by several inches, and his high boyish voice had broken while I was away. His face looked different, too, serious and eerily grown-up.

"Loïc!" I exclaimed and patted him on the shoulder. "Great to see you, and good of you to come and pick me up."

For a second, he flashed a crooked half-smile. "Couldn't stand the thought of nobody there to greet you", he said, sounding somewhat grim, which I put down to his new masculine voice I wasn't yet used to.

He pivoted on his heel as if he wanted us to get going towards the bus station, but he only took two or three steps before he swivelled back around again and a peculiar expression crossed his face that made me suspicious. His lips twitched as if he was about to speak, then quivered and contorted wretchedly.

"Loïc", I said urgently, as an uneasy prickling took hold of my innards. "Is something wrong?"

"Oh, Mick. It's so dreadful. I … I don't know how to tell you. Gwenna … _Nell_", he emphasized the name I had given her, "she … she …"

"Say it, Loïc. Tell me. Please."

"Oh, Mick, it's so … so …" His voice keeled over into a young child's inconsolable wail.

I dropped my knapsack on the wet ground and put my arm around the distraught boy's shoulders despite my own heavy heart. "Whatever it is, just tell me now."

"Gwenna … she … she … got married while you were away."

The earth seemed to move beneath my feet. My body went all limp and numb. I don't know how I managed to stay upright.

Weakly, I breathed, "What? And … _why?" _I heard my own voice as if through a thick padded wall, wondering if I was about to faint with the shock.

This couldn't be true. I would have sworn on both our lives that Nell would never betray me, now how was I supposed to believe she'd fall right into someone else's arms when I was away for six months? _Marrying?_ The Nell I knew wouldn't have done such a thing in six _years._

Faintly, I heard Loïc's voice, a hurried rush of words. It took me a moment to realize he could only be talking to me and I'd better pay attention.

"… she said he'd had his way with her and … she thought she was … in the family way, and Papa said they must get married now that she was spoiled goods, because of the scandal and our reputation and everything. That is, at first he didn't believe her at all and thought she'd made it all up about him having her behind the woodshed and _you'd_ … knocked her up before you left. Erm, sorry, Mick", he added hastily when he saw me close my eyes, pained.

"Jesus. Jesus Christ." Words failed me, but there was one thing I had to know. "Who's 'he'?"

"Simon Dupré, our neighbour. He's had a crush on her for ages, but she didn't want him, and when you were gone so long, he … he …"

"It's alright, you don't have to say it", I cut in. "Just tell me what happened next."

The rest of his tale was even more devastating. Obviously, their father had insisted that they get married to save what there was to save, and she had fought him tooth and nail and in the end run away, threatening to jump off the cliff by the abbey if he didn't call off the wedding he'd already set the date for with the village priest.

"After that, Papa was scared for a while and left her alone, but then you didn't show up the day you said you'd be home, and not on the next day either or the day after, and he said you'd never come back anyway and she must get wed now before it really starts to show. The baby, you know."

I stood frozen, while my skin seemed to vibrate with a weird kind of electric current and my ears rang with a low-pitched buzzing that drowned out any other noise.

Chaos swirled in my head.

It hurt me physically to think what an ordeal she had been through and how she must be feeling now.

Married to some piece of dirt who had taken advantage of her.

Pregnant with that bastard's child.

Or could the child be mine after all? Not that it made a difference now that I wouldn't be the man it was going to call father anyway.

Worst of all was hearing that she had thought I'd abandoned her when she didn't hear from me and I didn't come home when I had said I would.

All my dreams, our dreams, our beautiful plans, the wedding, the cottage, a bright future filled with laughter and love and easy understanding – my little world, the world that had been so nicely mended after all the grief and loss and disappointment the past years had brought, lay shattered at my feet again, and I wasn't sure how to pick up the pieces this time.

Loïc stood by, watching me with large observant eyes. The muscles of his jaw worked, but he remained silent until I said in a dead voice, "Let's go."

Not that I wanted to go anywhere. It was only reason telling me I couldn't remain rooted to the pier forever. I had no real wish to get on the bus to the place I had thought I could call home now.

Loïc appeared relieved when he set himself into motion. I picked up my bag and plodded after him with heavy, dragging feet, like the old man I felt I had turned into, jaded and battered and empty.

We didn't speak a single word all the way on the bus. There was nothing to say, nothing that would have made any difference.

* * *

Here's the soundtrack of this chapter, a simple, beautiful song about missing the person who meant the world to you.

**A Fine Frenzy – Last of Days**

_I watched you disappear into the clouds  
swept away into another town  
_

_The world carries on without you  
but nothing remains the same  
I'll be lost without you  
until the last of days_

_The sun is in the east,  
rising for the beasts  
and the beauties  
_

_If only I could tear it down  
plant it in the ground to warm your face  
I built myself a castle on the beach  
watching as it slid into the sea_

_The world carries on without you  
but nothing remains the same  
I'll be lost without you  
until the last of days  
_


	2. Nell: The Apple Garden

Nell is trying to be brave while Mick is off for his months at sea, missing him as she feared she would. Some additional troubles make things even worse for her.**  
**

This is her song - "If I could be where you are" must be what she thinks a million times, alone without her beloved, getting more and more desperate for him to return.

**Enya – If I Could Be Where You Are**

_Where are you this moment?  
Only in my dreams...  
You're missing, but you're always,  
a heartbeat from me._

_I'm lost now without you.  
I don't know where you are.  
I keep watching,  
I keep hoping,  
but time keeps us apart._

_Is there a way I can find you?  
Is there a sign I should know?  
Is there a road I could follow,  
to bring you back home?_

_Winter lies before me,  
Now you're so far away.  
In the darkness of my dreaming.  
The light tore, you will stay._

_If I could be close beside you,  
If I could be where you are.  
If I could reach out and touch you,  
and bring you back home._

_Is there a way I can find you?  
Is there a sign I should know?  
Is there a road I could follow,  
to bring you back home?_

_To me..._

* * *

Two and a half long months since he had left.

Seventy-six days to be exact.

She couldn't help counting them. She lived for the rare joyous moments when a letter arrived and reassured her for a little while. The three of them she'd had so far were her greatest treasures, and she re-read them every night.

His letters were no elaborate epistles full of romantic declarations of love. What he penned were mostly accounts of where he'd been and what he'd done, yet those mundane things he wrote about were immensely consoling to her lonely, worried heart, being the coveted proof that he was alive and well, or at least had been at the time he'd written. She feasted on his simple words, and she smiled about his occasional charming little spelling mistakes. His handwriting suited him, she found - determined, neatly printed letters, devoid of fanciful loops and flourishes, graceful in their unadorned clarity.

She threw on a worn cardigan over her old brown gingham dress and picked up the big woven basket that sat by the kitchen door to go and get some apples from the Duprés' tree.

Marie, their widowed neighbour and mother of Nell's childhood friend Simon, had invited her to come over and pick as many as she needed, as often as she wanted to. "That tree is so full that it's about to crumble under the weight", she had said, "and we could never use all of those apples on our own."

Nell had taken her up on the offer several times and produced a lot of apple pies, apple sauce and special treats like thin crusty crêpes stuffed with stewed apples, almonds and honey. Baking and cooking were among the few things that took her mind off her anxiety and her loneliness, and she found pleasure in the scents and tastes familiar to her since childhood.

Today, she was planning to make _far breton _with apples instead of the traditional raisins. She slipped through the small gate that connected the neighbouring gardens of the Duprés and the Kervennecs and set about looking for the nicest, ripest fruit on the low-hanging branches of the gnarled tree.

A rustling of grass announced the arrival of someone, probably Marie in pursuit of a chat.

Nell stretched to pluck a red-cheeked apple from high above and turned around, ready to greet the woman who was almost like an aunt to her – but it was Simon who stood there, having grabbed an apple, munching, eyeing her.

"How's your sailor doin'?" he asked without introduction or greeting. "Comin' back soon?"

Nell replied, irritated, "I've told you he'll be gone till early next year. Why're you asking?"

"Must have forgotten what you said." He slouched against the fence, taking another hearty bite of his apple, grinning impertinently. "Just wanted to say if you need someone to comfort you …"

"Don't be disgusting, Simon. I thought we were friends!"

He tossed the apple core away and threw up his hands. "Hey, I wasn't meaning anything improper, honestly! Why're you're being so prissy? What would be so wrong about a hug between old friends, and a little kiss perhaps? Your sailor boy needn't even know if you think it'd upset him."

"Oh, sure", Nell said sharply, rolling her eyes. Simon had never got over her snubbing him repeatedly, and had kept trying again and again. She had never minded a bit of playful banter or even his hand on his back or her shoulder, their friendship dating way back into their childhood, but she had never encouraged him to go any further, and she had expected him to get the message when it became official that she and Mick were an item.

She should have known that he'd be back for her some time when Mick was away. The only surprise was that he had actually waited that long.

She bent to retrieve the brimming basket and walked past Simon without another word.

He called something after her, but she paid him no attention and kept heading for her own back door.

While she was peeling and cutting the apples and preparing the batter, she allowed herself to imagine she was making a treat for Mick, who loved his food. The old saying that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach was certainly true for him. For a while, she dreamily pictured him, leaning casually against the heavy table with his arms crossed, watching her, getting into her way to steal a kiss, nicking a few of the apple cubes she'd prepared for the pie topping or dipping his finger into the whipped cream to lick it clean with relish, grinning mischievously when she slapped or scolded him.

In fact, there were so many things that reminded her of Mick, whatever she did or wherever she went.

A man with his hands pushed deeply into his pockets. A fisherman in a heavy blue sweater like the one he owned. A scallop shell on the shore. Even the large, freshly caught monkfish she'd recently carried home from Jean-Luc's, wrapped in a bit of old newspaper.

Or the little boy with the unruly black curls she'd once seen toddling along the beach. She had not forgotten the dream she'd had after Mick had sailed, nor the bitter, tearful disappointment when she began to bleed, although reason told her she should be glad that she was not yet with child. There would still be plenty of time for that when he was back.

She blinked away a tear or two nevertheless as she remembered the moment and kept whipping her batter until she was satisfied with the appearance of the yellow frothy mixture. This was going to be one perfect _far breton, _even if it was for Papa, who'd be back from duty tonight, and not for the future father of her own children.

* * *

_A month later_

When Nell came back from the market, glad to drop off the heavily loaded basket she had been lugging along, her mother said, "Simon was here while you were away. Marie's not feeling well and has asked if you could come over and help a bit. I hope she hasn't caught that awful cold that's spreading at the moment. It could be her death, with her bad heart and all." She shook her head sorrowfully. "You better go right over and see what you can do. I'll put away the groceries."

Nell sighed. She wasn't in the mood for Marie's complaints or chatter, but she couldn't refuse helping her ailing neighbour in good conscience.

So she wrapped the warm shawl she'd been about to take off around her shoulders again and went through into the adjoining garden to knock on Marie's back door.

The woman opened, red-nosed, red-eyed and sniffling. "Thank God you're here, Gwenna love. I'm feeling so weak and worn out, I'm aching all over and I break into a sweat if I do as much as put the kettle on."

Nell settled her down in a kitchen chair and fussed about her a bit, made her a pot of tea and took care a few household chores that Marie, who was a meticulous housewife, insisted couldn't be put off until she was well again.

When she had prepared a pot of stew to simmer on the stove until Simon came back from whatever he'd gone off to do, she said goodbye and walked out into the garden, passing the apple tree and the old half-timbered woodshed on her way to the gate.

"Ain't you feelin' lonely, Gwenna?"

Startled, she whirled around to see Simon leaning against the rear wall of the woodshed. She couldn't believe he was trying to hit on her again.

"Sure I am. I miss him a lot. But if we're lucky, he'll be back come February."

"If he comes back at all." There was a glint in Simon's eyes she had never seen there before, putting her off.

"Of course he'll come back", she retorted indignantly. She was so fed up with everyone taking him for a faithless ne'er-do-well simply on the strength of his being a foreigner and a sailor. "Why does everybody think he's a fraud, just because he's American?" She hoped the tears pricking at the back of her eyes wouldn't start flowing right now.

Simon didn't comment on her question. Instead, he grabbed her round the waist abruptly, jerking her unwilling body towards him.

She tore away with an inarticulate cry. "Hey! Whatcha think you're doing?"

"Shush, don't alarm all the neighbours. Can't one hug a friend who needs comfort?"

"I don't need …"

"Oh yes, Gwenna, you could use a bit of comfort, you certainly could." He pulled her close again and prevented more protest by kissing her hard on the mouth. When he finally released her, he stroked her cheek and murmured in a throaty voice, "You're so pretty. It's really a shame you're alone. Your sailor must be out of his mind to leave you on your own for so long."

She wrestled one arm free to wipe her mouth on her sleeve, glaring at him.

He laughed and locked her into another tight embrace.

She struggled to push both hands hard against his chest, but she was no match for his body strengthened from labouring on the farm and in the fields.

He gave a small triumphant chuckle at her futile fight and, to Nell's boundless horror, reached down to lift the hem of her skirt, going for her knickers, yanking them down, while his other arm kept her encircled in an iron grip.

"Have you lost it entirely?" she hissed. "Stop it this moment, or I'll scream loud enough for the whole village to hear me."

"Oh, no, you won't scream, my dear. Do you think your pretty sailor will still want you if everybody knows you went straight back to your childhood sweetheart when he was gone a few weeks? Everybody knows we're old friends, so who'd have reason to doubt me if I said this was what happened?"

He was now holding her with both arms again, tickling the back of her neck.

A red-hot fury burned inside her, but she didn't dare scream for fear Simon would make good on his threat, not only damaging her reputation among the villagers but also making her look faithless in Mick's eyes.

Would he believe Simon's lies if he heard them?

She was sure he wouldn't, but she couldn't take any chances. She couldn't put the future she and Mick were planning at risk in any way, not when they were going to such lengths to make it work.

When Simon shoved her against the wall of the shed, she didn't fight him any more. Something within her had cracked, leaving her numb and detached.

As if from outside her own body, she witnessed how he opened his belt and trousers, hitched g up her skirt, fondled her _there,_ finally pushed into her.

She closed her eyes and stood stiffly, concentrating on the monotonous hum of the diesel generator behind the house, trying to think of nothing at all until it was over.

He buttoned his fly, did up his belt and actually had the nerve to smile. "This will remain a secret among old friends, won't it?"

She didn't have the strength to do anything, although she wanted to yell at him and slap him and shout it from the rooftops how he had just abused her and their old friendship.

Feeling soiled, she pulled up her knickers and stumbled away to climb the stile at the back of the Duprés' farm plot, running across the fields and the Brest road, not stopping until she came to the cliff-top path that led to the chapel.

She tore open the heavy door and let it crash shut behind her, falling on her knees in one of the creaking wooden pews, her tear-streaked face turned up towards the benign painted smile of the Virgin Mary in her blue-and-white gown above the altar.

But it wasn't the Mother of God whom her heart implored for forgiveness and help.

When the hard, narrow kneeler became all too uncomfortable, she slumped back onto the seat. She sat there for a long, long while, churning the same questions over and over in her mind.

Why hadn't she simply run away after his first attempt to embrace her? Why hadn't she hit him in the face, or somewhere further down, and dashed off?

Had she done anything to encourage him?

She was quite sure she hadn't, but why was she feeling so guilty now?

She jumped when the chapel door opened. Quickly, she went back down on her knees, her forehead resting on her clasped hands, as if deeply immersed in prayer.

Peering over her fingers, she saw with relief that it was only Madame Bénoît coming in to say her daily rosary. She was old and half blind and certainly wasn't going to notice anything odd about her behaviour.

She waited for a few minutes until the old woman had settled down and begun to mumble faintly, then she got up and left to go home, trying to look as if she'd just been out for a long walk after looking in on Marie Dupré and her reddened eyes were due to tears of loneliness or a bout of that cold.

She went through the motions of the usual modest supper with Mother and Loïc and retired upstairs very early after scrubbing her whole body fiercely with the cheap rough soap until her skin felt raw and clean.

Inside, she still felt filthy and used and betrayed by her old friend who had suddenly turned into a lewd and greedy monster.

For the first time she did not take up Mick's letters to read before switching off the light. His words on paper couldn't soothe the turmoil inside her head and her heart tonight. They'd only make her feel even more lonely and lost.

She lay there, wide awake, clutching her duvet, yearning for his gentle touch, his scent, his kiss to drive away the revolting thought of those other hands pawing her, those other lips on hers, that ultimate violation of her body, of her privacy, her modesty.

She pressed her face into her pillow to muffle her soft sobbing and tried to ward off the recurring ugly images, tried to replace them with the memory of Mick making love to her.

She found she couldn't. The groping broad fingers, the triumphant grin, the rough intrusion on her body drowned out the sweet caresses and the warm, cosy comfort of Mick's embrace that she had been able to recall so easily all the time before.

Somehow that was worst of all, the way Simon's leery bestiality rendered her unable to go back to those moments when Mick had so tenderly, so innocently set about to discover the most secret parts of her, when she had been so happy despite the impending separation.

She stifled a desperate sob, stuffing the corner of the pillow into her mouth, when she found she wasn't even able to picture his beloved beautiful face. All she saw in her mind's eye were curly black hair and large green eyes, but strangely disjointed.

How could that be possible? How could she forget what exactly the man she loved more than anything looked like while the crude touch of an abusive outsider remained so firmly burned into her mind that she almost expected to see marks left on her body by his coarse fingers?

She wished she'd asked him for a photograph before he left, something to aid her newly unreliable memory.

She wished she'd had some money of her own to contribute to the purchase of their cottage that would have rendered this whole business of his going so far away for so long unnecessary.

She wished she was three months older and finally had him back – back for good.

But most of all she wished she could turn back time and make undone what had been done to her.

* * *

The ugly episode had just about begun to fade from memory, albeit slowly, helped by the additional workload of Christmas preparations, when she realized that she hadn't needed those cotton pads at the bottom of her chest of drawers in a while.

She wasn't too worried about the fact because her period had never been of the regular-as-clockwork kind, but when there was still no sign of the monthly curse two weeks later, she decided reluctantly to confide in her mother. It was two days before Christmas.

Mathilde blanched when she told her, appalled that Simon, the ruddy-cheeked, easy-going young man from next door whom she'd known since he'd been a baby, should have done such a thing to her girl. "God help us all when your father hears about this", she sighed.

"Must he …", Nell began.

"Gwenna, dear, we will have to tell him soon. If you are four weeks overdue now, it won't be too long until it's beginning to show, and we don't want him to find out we've been keeping this from him, do we?"

She gave her daughter a pleading look, appearing even more fragile in her state of shock about her daughter's dilemma. The thick woollen sweater she wore seemed to weigh down her haggard figure like an oversized anchor would drag down a tiny boat.

Once again, Nell felt compelled to hug and comfort her mother in a moment when she would have needed a consoling embrace herself.

But this time, she didn't have the strength to do it. She simply went back to work, and, knowing her mother had a point, conceded, "I'll tell him after the holidays."

She hoped and prayed for the monthly torment to come, waited with a sinking feeling for the cramps and the slight nausea she usually hated so much. She didn't care if she'd be too sick to enjoy the Christmas roast and the sweet treats, for she wouldn't be able to enjoy them as usual anyway, if only some droplets of red signalled that she was not pregnant from that brute next door, that she wouldn't have to face her father and tell him that she was with child.

* * *

Christmas came and went in a blur, and nothing happened.

She began to feel sick to her stomach, a sickness neither due to pregnancy nor to its opposite. It was due to the paralyzing fear of her father's reaction, and to knowing that she couldn't put the confrontation off for much longer.

Finally, the day before New Year's Eve, she plucked up all her courage and told him truthfully what had happened, bracing herself for violent words and violent actions.

He didn't strike out at her, but he might as well have punched her in the gut when he said he didn't believe a word she said and it must have been that dirty good-for-nothing American who'd gotten her into this pickle. "Why are you making up lies about Simon just to protect that shady foreigner of yours? Why don't you just admit that he's had you and that you're expecting his little bastard kid? I told you so. It's what those strangers do. They promise you the world and next thing you know they are off to God knows where, never to be seen again!"

"You know he's left to _work,_ and to earn the money we need to buy our house."

"Oh, yes, your _house_. What's all this about a house of your own, huh? Isn't our place good enough for the _Mister_ from the States? Don't you get me any ideas, young lady. You're certainly not better than anyone else just because you've got it into your head to marry a foreigner. If he ever shows up to marry you, that is."

"He's not like that. He will be back."

"Well, perhaps you'd better hope he won't be coming back. I've a good mind to break his sorry American neck for what he's done to you."

She knew he meant it and dissolved into tears of utter misery. It would be no use trying to explain again and again what had really happened that day, in the Duprés' garden. He wasn't inclined to believe her, and there was nothing she could do to prove that she indeed told the truth.

Slowly, she also began to doubt that Mick was going to believe her.

The new year that had held so much promise and hope for her suddenly appeared bleak, threatening even.

The happy anticipation of her reunion with Mick was now tainted by the dread of having to tell him she was pregnant and it was not his child, by the fear he would reject her after all, thinking she'd betrayed him, and that she'd have to bury all her dreams.


	3. Nell: The Cliff's Edge

I didn't actually have it in mind while I wrote this, but for some reason, I remembered the Irish ballad of Annachie Gordon and his Jeannie and discovered that the lyrics are fitting Nell's story pretty well.

My favourite version of this song was recorded by Loreena McKennitt, but the Sinéad O'Connor or Mary Black versions available at youtube are also lovely.

_... Down came her father and he's standing at the door  
Saying, Jeannie, you are trying the tricks of a whore  
You care nothing for a man who cares so very much for thee  
You must marry Lord Sultan and leave Annachie  
For Annachie Gordon is barely but a man  
Although he may be pretty, but where are his lands?  
The Sultan's lands are broad and his towers they run high,  
You must marry Lord Sultan and leave Annachie_

_(Jeannie:)_  
_With Annachie Gordon I beg for my bread_  
_And before I marry Sultan, his gold to my head,_  
_With gold to my head and straight down to my knee,_  
_And I'll die if I don't get my love Annachie_

* * *

In the end, Jacques Kervennec did come to believe his daughter.

Nell wasn't quite sure what had been his reasons, but the day after her father returned from his next period of duty at the lighthouse, Simon knocked formally on their front door and asked to have a word with Jacques privately.

They retreated into the tiny room which the family grandly called the "parlour" and hardly ever used, staying there for quite a while.

When they returned, Jacques had a peculiar smile on his face, and Simon smirked smugly. Assuming they had talked some kind of business, Nell didn't think much about them and kept stitching away at the seam of one of the pillowcases she was making for her trousseau, murmuring a faint response to Simon's goodbye.

"I think I have to apologize to you, Gwenaëlle", her father's voice boomed right after the door had fallen shut behind their visitor.

She gave a start and narrowly avoided pricking her finger.

Apologize? Her father? What was he talking about?

"I did you wrong when I didn't believe you. Simon came to confess what happened between the two of you. It was a regrettable mistake – but these things happen. He's been in love with you for a long time, and feelings can sometimes get the better of a strapping lad like him …"

"Fine _love _or _feeling,_ taking another man's fiancée behind the shed", Nell said acidly.

"What he did was wrong, sure, but he's a decent chap after all. He knows about your … situation, and he is man enough to bear the consequences of what the two of you did. He's ready to marry you, give you and the kid a home and save your reputation. Should be soon, though. If you're lucky, people will even believe it's a premature birth. Better hope it's going to be a skinny kid." His laugh made Nell flinch.

"I cannot marry him, Father. I am engaged. To Mick."

Her father sneered. "As if he'd still want you when he comes home to find you pregnant. You ought to be glad to get a husband like Simon. A local boy from a good family, and pretty well-off with a fine farm and everything. You could have done worse, girl, a lot worse."

"Marrying a penniless American sailor, is that what you mean by worse?" Nell asked bitterly. "Sorry to disappoint you, Father, but _he_ is who I'm going to marry. Not Simon."

She turned to leave the room and went upstairs, where she flopped down on her bed and slipped Mick's last letter out of its envelope. It had arrived a couple of days ago, and her heart had taken a joyous somersault when she read that everything was going according to plan and the _Liberté _was to return to Brest on February first.

Her brief surge of hopeful happiness was dampened at the family's Sunday afternoon coffee table.

Her father gave the news of her "engagement" to the rest of the family, remarking how lucky Nell was for things to be resolved so nicely after all and that he had already been to see Father Duval to set the wedding date. Due to the circumstances, the priest had agreed to skip the usual waiting period and hold the ceremony a week from Saturday, on the sixth of February.

Nell glared at him, dark fire in her eyes, set down her cider cup harshly and declared in a decisive voice, "I'm _not _going to marry him. If I can't marry Mick, I'd rather not marry at all and raise the kid on my own."

Her mother drew an audible breath, while Loïc looked on in stunned silence.

"Come _on_, girl", her father said in an attempt at a soothing voice. "You're not meaning that. You're upset now because you have set your heart on that foreigner, but once you're married to Simon, you'll see …"

Nell didn't hear the end of his sentence. She stormed outside, blind with tears, ran into the cold wintry air without a coat or shawl, ran despite a stitch in her side until she found herself by the cliff top near the abbey. There she stopped, panting, peering dizzily over the edge into the swirling waters down there, as agitated as her own tortured mind.

It was a very gloomy day, and although it was not yet four, the beacon of the lighthouse had already begun to lick the dark choppy waves in rhythmic intervals.

Freezing gusts of wind chilled her to the bone. Mechanically, she rubbed her hands and wrapped her arms around her chest, her gaze still drawn towards the churlish sea while the wind howled and rushed in her ears and a terrifying yet elating new thought flashed through her head.

Perhaps there was an easy solution to this mess she was in, a final way out of it all.

"Gwenaëlle!"

A distant voice calling her name through the noise of nature's forces. She did not react.

"Gwenaëlle!"

The voice again, louder, closer.

Her father had found her.

"What are you doing out here? You're going to catch your death! Now come on home, girl. Everything will be fine in the end."

"_Fine?"_ Nell spat out. _"Fine? _Spend the rest of my life married to a man I don't love? Fine indeed! I'm saying it again, I will not marry him!"

"Yes, you will! You're not waiting for that sailor to come back! God alone knows if he's really going to be back when he says he will. It's bad enough that you got in the family way unmarried, but as yet hardly anyone's got wind of it. You've got to get wed pretty damn quick before you're starting to get fat and people will become suspicious…"

All of Nell's vehemently vociferous protest amounted to nothing. She might as well have shouted at the impassive sea or the forbidding cliffs. Her father was adamant that she accept Simon's "gracious" proposal, overriding all her objections.

Until she made her last desperate move and played her trump card.

Two determined steps to the very edge of the cliff.

"Gwenaëlle!" her father exclaimed in horror. "Get _back!_"

"You can't make me marry him, Father. I'd rather jump."

"Don't be silly, Gwenaëlle. Don't think you can …"

"I'm not playing games, Father", she said in a calm, cold tone. "Either you agree to let me go my own way or I'll jump."

"You can't …"

"Yes, I can, and I will. It's just a little step. See?" She put one foot forward and let it hover over the abyss.

"_Gwenna, NO!" _Her father's wavering voice and the pet name he had hardly ever used since she'd been a child revealed that he was truly frightened now. He was with her in no time, grabbing her, pulling her away.

"I only want what's best for you, why don't you understand, girl?"

Nell, advancing towards the edge again, snapped over her shoulder, "Because it isn't what's best for me. You don't know what's best for me. You can't make me marry him!"

"Good afternoon, Mademoiselle, Monsieur", a third voice, mellifluous and familiar, suddenly said.

Nell and her father turned to see a well-known lean, slightly stooped figure clad in black, hands clasped behind the back, a hesitant smile in a pale melancholy face, obviously puzzled about the scene he'd just witnessed from afar.

"Good afternoon, Father Duval", Jacques greeted the new arrival.

Nell only nodded at the village priest. She had always liked this soft-spoken man with the soulful eyes and the high lined forehead beneath wavy greying hair because he had always been kind to her, but today he was about the last person she'd wanted to bump into. She wished he wouldn't stop to talk.

Of course he didn't just walk on by. "You seem upset. Can I ... can I be of any assistance?" he asked quietly.

"I think we could indeed use your help again, Father. The girl" – he pointed at Nell with his thumb in a manner that made her feel no better than some troublesome animal – "was just about to commit a mortal sin out of sheer pigheadedness. Maybe you can talk some sense into her."

Duval raised one of his thick black eyebrows questioningly. Jacques started to go on about how she'd been ready to jump off the cliff and how she didn't get what a stroke of luck the young Dupré's proposal was in fact and whatnot.

"May I come home with you to speak to your daughter in private, Monsieur Kervennec?" the priest asked calmly.

"I don't want to go home!" Nell exclaimed, imagining how her father would try to listen and comment. "I can't just now."

"Fine, then we'll do the talking somewhere else. Monsieur Kervennec, if you would leave us alone? I will deliver Gwenaëlle safely home afterwards."

"Suit yourself, Father", Jacques grumbled and walked away. Nell was surprised that he had agreed to go.

"Let's walk over to the chapel, shall we?" Duval said to Nell. "It'll be a trifle warmer in there. You must be frozen. Oh, maybe … wait …" He took off the soft charcoal scarf he was wearing with his black coat and wrapped it around her neck. It didn't do very much to warm her, but it was better than nothing. She thanked him gratefully, and they walked in silence until Duval opened the chapel door and ushered her in.

Pulling a key from the pocket of his coat, he unlocked the tiny vestry and sat Nell down on the only chair in the room. "We'll have no unbidden eavesdroppers in here, and it's not quite as chilly as the sanctuary itself", he said as he switched on the dim bare light bulb dangling from the whitewashed ceiling. "I should have taken you to the rectory, but the village would have been too far to walk without a coat on", he added apologetically.

She couldn't have cared less about the surroundings their interview took place, unusual or not, coat or no coat. She didn't even care about the cold.

When he proceeded to ask for her own version of events, it all came tumbling out of her in an unsorted gush – the rape, the pregnancy, the unwanted wedding being planned over her head, Mick's long absence, their plans to get married, her father's unrelenting refusal to let her follow her heart.

The priest listened attentively, without interrupting her, sometimes narrowing his eyes, sometimes nodding in assertion or shaking his head in disbelief, at one point giving her his impeccable white handkerchief so she could dry her tears.

In the end, he said, "It is decent of the young Dupré that he has acknowledged his misconduct and offered to marry you so that your reputation would not be damaged and you and the child would have a home. Yet I do think your father is misguided in trying to force you into this marriage if you feel so strongly against it. I daresay I know you well enough to be safe in assuming you didn't do anything to encourage Simon while you were engaged to your Mr. … what's his name … "

"Carpenter", she whispered.

"Yes, Mr. Carpenter. What I was about to say is that I know you are not what they call a fast girl, and I am deeply sorry that you find yourself in such a troubling situation that you even considered putting an end to your life, and to that of the child you are carrying. You know the Church's stance on suicide, don't you?"

She nodded. No burial in holy ground, a deadly, unforgivable sin, and so on.

"I'm not sure if it is for us to judge a troubled soul who commits a sin out of sheer despair, but please promise me you are not going to try such a thing again. I'm going to tell your father that I cannot hold the planned ceremony in good conscience."

Nell blinked, nonplussed.

"But I might be glad to marry you and your Mr. Carpenter at a later time. I take it he's not sharing our faith, but from what little I know of him, I think he's a good young man", Duval added with a small, almost conspiratorial smile.

She had to be dreaming. This was too good to be true.

"Thank you, Father. Thank you so much." She was weak with relief and now began to shiver.

This didn't escape Duval's keen eye, and he said kindly, "Let me bring you home now, Mademoiselle. You need to warm up, and I need to speak to your father."

Nell's mother was a weeping wreck by the time they arrived, and her father was pacing the kitchen with a grim face. For the first time in her life she saw him deeply shaken.

While Mathilde flung herself at Nell in a tearful embrace, the priest spoke to Jacques in hushed tones. From the corner of her eye, Nell saw her father nod contritely.

"You've won", he told her curtly in a rough voice when the priest had left. "If he comes and if he still wants you with that bun in the oven, you can marry your American on the sixth of February. If he loves you as much as you say he does, he surely won't mind tying the knot quickly."

* * *

He didn't come.

Not on the first and not on the second and not even on the third.

Had she told herself that the _Liberté_ might have been out of luck with the weather after all and arrive a day or two late, her hopes began to fade.

She cried a lot, day and night, utterly disappointed, feeling betrayed.

Could she have been so wrong in trusting him unconditionally? Had he only been playing games with her love and trust after all?

She couldn't believe she should have been so mistaken.

But the only other possible explanation was even more dreadful – that what she'd feared all the time had happened, that Mick had fallen victim to some accident or illness or shipwreck.

Her father was triumphant, of course. Hadn't he told her all along that this stranger was no better than all the other good-looking, untrustworthy foreigners who had come out of nowhere and disappeared without a trace, leaving a trail of broken hearts behind?

On the fifth, Jacques declared that she and the American had had their chance and blown it and that she ought to reconsider Simon's proposal.

"Would you believe that the lad is _still_ ready to marry you despite all those times you've snubbed him? Think of your baby's future if you don't care to think of your own", he said. "Oh, and maybe you'll want to know that the _Liberté_ arrived in Brest last night. Without your American, as it seems. Or he should have arrived long before now."

* * *

Feeling as if she was going to her own execution, she walked to the church the next morning, framed by her parents, in the traditional embroidered black dress with a white lacy apron and lacy bonnet that her mother had worn for her own wedding twenty-two years ago.

She endured the ceremony stony-faced, said yes when she was asked to and dutifully exchanged vows and rings with the man who would be her husband now instead of the sweet-natured handsome foreigner who should have been in his place.

* * *

Father Duval had been invited to join the newlyweds and their families at the Kervennecs' home for a small informal wedding lunch but had excused himself politely.

Instead, he sat down heavily in his old plush armchair after the service and allowed himself a generous shot of the fine Calvados he usually saved for special occasions.

Caroline, his sister and housekeeper, walked into the room as he sipped the brandy with a sombre face. "Have you ever seen a more dreadful wedding?" she asked, shaking her head.

Her brother nodded regretfully. "I have never seen such an unhappy bride in all of my twenty-five years on the job", he murmured.

"Didn't you wish the poor thing would have the courage to say no?" Caroline said with unusual fervour.

Duval couldn't help nodding again. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't."

He reached for the bottle and poured himself another brandy. Caroline clucked reprovingly and went into the kitchen. She knew when her brother wanted to be left alone.

Glass in hand, he looked up at the crucifix on the wall and silently asked the Lord if he had done the right thing.

Even the second glass of brandy did nothing to erase the images from his mind's eye – neither the desperate shivering girl in her wool dress and thin cardigan by the edge of the cliff, fiercely defending her love and her dreams against an unrelenting father, nor the dead-eyed young woman who had come to see him the day before, saying she had changed her mind about the wedding, nodding tearfully when he had asked her, twice, if she was certain.

He was quite sure that he wouldn't forget her until his last day on God's earth and that he would not be easily able to shake the feeling of having failed that young troubled member of his flock.

* * *

On a wanly sunny Monday morning, nine days after the wedding, Nell went to the market for some groceries. A red-haired woman greeted her as if she knew her. She returned the greeting with absent-minded courteousness and was about to start choosing her vegetables when the woman said, "Our boys will be finally back this Friday. Aren't you glad the long wait is over? What bad luck they had at the end of their journey - all the better that they're coming home at last now."

Nell stared at her in utter puzzlement.

"We met at the pier last summer when the _Liberté_ cast off, didn't we?" the woman asked, a little cautious, obviously thinking she mistaken Nell for someone else.

"Yes, we did … but you say 'coming home at last'? Didn't the _Liberté_ return last week?"

The woman laughed. "Oh, don't say they told you that too? My neighbour had heard something, and I got all hopeful, but when I went to the port, it was some British vessel called _Liberty!_ A whole day wasted travelling in vain, and in that weather, too. What a difference one tiny letter makes, huh? Oh, wait … you haven't been waiting for your young man all the time, have you? Hey, love … anything wrong?"

The stranger caught her as she went slack, held her steady until the dizziness had passed.

Trance-like, she shook it off, finished her shopping and walked back home.

Loïc was waiting for her at the bend in the road, a grey slip of paper in his hand. "This just arrived for you. It's not something I wanted to leave with Simon or Marie", he said with a strange expression on his face. Looking at her more closely, he went on, "Are you ill, Gwenna? You look like a ghost."

"No, no, I'm alright. Just got a little dizzy in the market. It's the baby, I guess."

She took the paper from him, and her face drained completely of all colour as she read the short telegram.

_Arriving Friday 19 Feb. Sorry I kept you waiting. Had some technical problems. Dying to see you. M._

A stab of pain knifed through her belly, and she gasped involuntarily.

She heard her brother call her name from a great distance as she crumpled to the ground, sinking into merciful darkness.

* * *

She came to in her old bedroom. Loïc must have somehow managed to bring her home.

The dizziness was gone, but she was cold, and the pain in her lower belly had grown into heavy cramps that made her feel a little sick.

She wasn't afraid until she saw her mother sitting next to her on the edge of her bed, stroking her hair. "My poor little girl", she said sadly. "I know how it feels, I've been through it myself, between you and your brother."

Nell didn't understand what she was talking about. "It's only my monthlies, Mother", she tried to reassure her, then paused for a moment, reconsidering what she'd just said. Something was off about that, wasn't it?

It was a while until her dazed mind made the right connections.

The symptoms, familiar as they seemed, wouldn't have been due to come back until many months later. How could she have forgotten about the baby?

The baby she wasn't going to have now.

She finally realized what the cramps and the blood really meant.

That she was stuck in this marriage for no reason at all now.

That she had given up Mick for no reason at all.

How should she ever be able to look him in the face again?

She straightened up carefully and said she needed to go to the outhouse, refused to let her mother help her get fully dressed or escort her outside.

"I'll manage on my own", she said in a cool, calm voice and was gone.

* * *

It was Loïc who found her shoes after hours of frantic search when he followed a sudden hunch and walked, alone, to the strip of sand near the fort they'd used to call their "family beach."

He had almost missed the pair of scuffed black lace-up half-boots sitting neatly atop a rain-darkened rock. It was only a bit of white that caught his eye.

A folded piece of paper was tucked into one of the boots.

Through a mist of tears, he read the scribbled words.

_I'm sorry._

_Tell Mick I have never loved anyone but him._

He put the note back and ran to the water's edge, not caring that he got his feet wet, shouting her name, scanning the waves for a glimpse of her hair or her dress, but in his heart he already knew what his mind still refused to believe.

It was too late.

* * *

A bunch of women, dressed in the drab browns and greys of winter, well-filled or empty shopping baskets on their arms, had gathered at the edge of the market place like a gaggle of greedy crows, putting their heads together in shuddering excitement to discuss the event that had disrupted the peaceful monotony of village life more than anything ever since half the village's fishing fleet and their crew had been lost in the worst storm of the century some years ago.

"Have you heard about Jacques Kervennec's girl? Actually went and drowned herself no two weeks after her wedding, can you believe that?" Clémence Maurigny, the portly wife of the mayor, said with tut-tutting disapproval. "God have mercy on her", she added as an afterthought, casting her eyes earthward in ostentatious piety.

"I guess it's running in the family. Her mother's a brick short of a full load after all", grim-faced Annaïg Guivarc'h replied rudely.

"You can say that again", Laurence Fayolle chimed in with pursed lips, which made her severe mouth look even thinner than it was anyway. "She hasn't spoken a word with her husband since it happened, as if it was his fault. But I have to say that the girl never appeared barmy to me, except maybe for her infatuation with that American. I thought she'd finally seen the light and got her good sense back when she married young Dupré after all instead of that peculiar stranger. He'd been after her for so long. How awful for the poor boy, losing her like that after all."

"Well, for _me_, something was off about that marriage from the beginning", declared Geneviève Rougeot decisively. "The girl was all mad about that long-haired foreigner, telling everyone who wanted to hear it that they were going to get married once he was back from sea, and then she suddenly hitches up with Simon Dupré when she's been known to turn him down time and again? Pah! I bet the American left her a little souvenir and they had to find a way to cover it up, and quickly."

"Wouldn't be surprised. Funny guy, that was. Rather tongue-tied, didn't seem much inclined to talk to anyone. Always appeared like he considered himself better than us", Clémence said.

"I actually thought him quite charming with his green eyes. Nice smile, too", Pierrette Le Goff piped up bashfully.

"If he ever smiled", Annaïg brushed her off quite harshly, giving the young woman a disdainfully patronizing look from steel-grey eyes. "Never appeared to say more than good morning to anybody. Seemed a bit stuck-up, that one. And now that you've mentioned those weird eyes of his – I found them rather disturbing."

"Oh, now don't be too hard on him." Sylvie Théroux tried to come to her niece Pierrette's aid. "I've always assumed he was just a little shy about his French. At least he was able to speak the language at all, not like Mireille Villiers's soldier."

"Dear God, yes, I remember him. I was rather astonished that Jean-Luc was ready to accommodate that youngster from the States, of all places, when Michel brought him along, what with Mireille running off with an American. How long has that been now? Twenty years, or even more?" Geneviève thoughtfully scratched her forehead under the black hat she wore at a rakish angle.

"No, not quite, it must have been after the war. My Charles was already walking by the time she left", Laurence said.

They chattered on in the same vein, regardless of the cool February air, until Clémence, the tallest of them, exclaimed, "Well, I'll be damned! Isn't that …" She pointed a thin finger down the road, at the pair of young men walking there.

"Speak of the devil!" Laurence's sharp eye had recognized the dark-haired companion of Loïc Kervennec immediately.

"Poor sod", Pierrette said sadly. "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes now."

"Dear God in heaven", Geneviève breathed, one hand on her rather flat bosom. "He's come back after all."

"Only that he's come too late. Oh, what a tragedy, for both of them", Sylvie said ruefully, her gaze following the two young men's backs down the road until they disappeared around a corner.

"For them both? Pah!" Annaïg snorted. "Poor young Gwenna Kervennec, and her child, in a cold wet grave, that's what's a tragedy. But him, who gets to go on and get the next girl into trouble? Certainly not."

"Frankly, Annaïg, I think this is disgusting."

The women's heads whipped round at the cold authoritative voice, dumbstruck to see the bony figure of Marianne Delacourt, very upright in her black coat. Nobody would have thought the taciturn dressmaker capable of speaking in such an imperious tone.

"Can't you all just leave the girl alone, and give poor Mick a rest, too? Do me and everyone else a favour and stop bad-mouthing Gwenna and the man she loved. You don't know a thing about him, none of you. If you had cared to get acquainted with him instead of dismissing him as a stuck-up stranger, you'd have seen what a lovely person he is. He'd have been a way better husband to Gwenna than that Dupré yokel."

For once, even Annaïg and Clémence were at a loss for words, and the small group disbanded rather quickly and unusually quietly after Marianne had walked away.

* * *

_... And the day that young Annachie came home on the tide  
And down came her maidens, all wringing of their hands,  
Saying, oh it's been so long, you've been so long on the sands  
So long on the sands, so long on the flood  
They have married your Jeannie and now she lies dead.  
_


	4. Mick: Lost at Sea

Again, the soundtrack will be found at the end of the chapter.

* * *

Loïc and I exited the bus in the village square, and I hung back until the other passengers had dispersed. I didn't want anyone to overhear the question I was going to ask Loïc now.

"I guess it's not a good idea, and I don't want her to get into trouble, but is there any chance that I can … that I can see her? Where are they living? And when is the … the baby due?"

Loïc didn't answer. His eyes, totally devoid of their usual mischievous sparkle, locked with mine for a moment before he averted his gaze, staring past me, his brow knitted darkly. He was drawing the tip of his shoe through the gravel, chewing on his lip, as if he was going to cry once more.

Watching him unsettled me almost as much as his account of Nell's involuntary wedding. This behaviour was so extremely unlike him.

Finally, he spoke.

"Mick, I ... I haven't told you everything back on the pier. Thought it would be better to wait till we're ho … here."

A cold hand gripped my heart with merciless fingers of steel.

What else could there be, I thought. Wasn't everything bad enough already, just because of a letter that hadn't been posted in time? Because of a goddamn stomach bug and a fire in the engine room?

"She tried again, Mick. She tried again and this time she … succeeded."

It took a moment until the meaning sank in.

Human language has no word to express what I felt.

My head was positively swimming. The world blurred before my eyes, and I must have swayed because the next thing I realized was Loïc flinging out his arms to catch me. He led me through the familiar cobbled streets down to Jean-Luc's tiny cottage near the port.

Jean-Luc must have seen us approaching, for his front door opened the moment we came up to it and he stepped out, a somberly compassionate expression on his face.

"Mick, my friend", he said quietly. "Come on in."

I followed him inside in a daze and hardly noticed that Loïc said goodbye.

Jean-Luc took my bag off me and made me sit in one of the low armchairs by the fireplace. I heard him pour a drink and lifted my eyes wearily to watch his sparse, precise movements.

"You'll need something stronger than cider tonight, mate", he said, handing me a surprisingly elegant cut-glass tumbler of amber apple brandy.

For the first time in my life, I got drunk purposefully. Got drunk to forget.

* * *

I woke up in Jean-Luc's upstairs chamber the next morning without any memory of having gone upstairs and taken off my clothes – but there I was, slightly hungover, in the familiar bed opposite the dormer window, wearing my old blue-and-white striped flannel pajamas.

Stretching my sleep-stiff body, I thought fondly of Nell in my half-waking state, remembering how she had mended the elbow of the pajama jacket when the threadbare fabric had torn. She had always kept an eye on the condition of my clothing because she knew how little I cared about these things.

_Nellie._

Her name lit a sudden blinding flash in my head, and it all came back to me in a split second. The cold hard hand squeezed my heart once more.

I had come home to find Nellie was gone. Gone for good.

This wasn't home any longer.

I'd go downstairs and thank Jean-Luc for his hospitality in all these years, give him some of that goddamn money I wouldn't need now and go straight back to Brest to sign up on the ship with the longest, farthest route ahead.

Away, far away from my broken dreams, my tarnished hopes, my hollow future.

But there was one thing I must do first, one last visit to pay.

Loïc had told me that Father Duval, the village priest, had gone out on a limb and held a memorial service and a small ceremony at the cemetery for Nell.

Fully aware of his church's harsh position on suicide, Duval, the severe-looking cleric whose sermons had had a sleep-inducing effect on me the few times I'd heard them, had boldly taken a stand in Nellie's favour. He had chosen to disregard the strict official rules and declared her death a tragic accident.

"He said it wasn't for us to judge her and that God would be loving enough to have mercy on a desperate girl who'd taken desperate measures. He said she wasn't a sinner who could never be forgiven but a victim of circumstances. I hope none of those sanctimonious gossips is going to write to the bishop to rat on him. He'd be in serious trouble then." When Jean-Luc, who had attended the ceremonies, had told me this, it made Duval, whom I had believed to be just another droning unworldly preacher, rise highly in my esteem.

Jean-Luc was already up when I came downstairs, and we shared a wordless breakfast, mine consisting mainly of a large cup of strong black coffee as I couldn't get anything solid down.

I went out into the cool morning. It was a bright, cloudless, frosty day, and I turned up the collar of my thick fisherman's sweater against the biting breeze as I walked into the village, hands pushed deeply into my pockets, where one of them wrapped itself firmly around the small object I had carried with me carefully for months. I had been so glad that I'd managed to keep it safe throughout the journey ever since I had obtained it.

The gate in the chest-high quarrystone enclosure creaked in its rusty hinges as I opened it and entered the tree-lined churchyard with its rows of small granite tombstones or ornate wrought-iron crosses.

I looked around quickly, grateful to find myself alone. It wasn't hard to make out the fresh graves in the small cemetery.

My chest felt constricted as I approached them and found the small wooden cross whose black inscription read _Gwenaëlle Dupré _and underneath, in smaller lettering, _15 mars 1916 – 15 février 1937._ A month to the day before her twenty-first birthday, I found myself thinking. As if that had any significance.

I dropped to my knees and touched the earth. It was so cold, so heavy, it was going to crush her.

_No, it wasn't._

She wasn't there. They had not found her body.

This was just a monument, a fake grave, unoccupied, unreal.

As unreal as it felt to me that she should never come back, never laugh with me, never cry on my shoulder, never kiss me again. Never be my bride nor the mother of my children.

It all seemed so cruelly wrong, a dreadful mistake.

I read her grave marker again. The name, the date, they, too, appeared so wrong.

This should have read _Nell Carpenter, beloved wife, mother and grandmother,_ and it shouldn't have existed for the next fifty or sixty years. The second date should have been 1987 or even later, a stone to mark a long, fulfilled, happy life, not one cut so brutally short, ending in hopeless desperation.

She might still be alive if I hadn't left her alone so long. If I had been there, I could have protected her from that bastard's advances, or he might not even have tried in the first place.

I could have saved her life if I had simply made a different decision, if I had swallowed my pride. Why had I so stubbornly insisted on putting the wedding off until we had our cottage? Why hadn't I simply married her before I left? We could have found some arrangement to avoid having to share her family's small house.

An anguished cry broke from my throat. I staggered to my feet and fled, flung open the gate that clanged shut beside me, ran and ran all the way to the lighthouse. I got out of breath, lungs stinging, but I still kept on.

Almost there, I stumbled and fell on the path that led to the memorial, skidded over the gravel, skinning both palms and wrists. Wincing, I struggled to get up and walked on, looking up at the mournful woman's face turned pleadingly towards the sea atop the granite column.

I knew without looking at it what was engraved in its base.

_Disparus en mer._

Lost at sea. Disappeared. Taken by a relentless, remorseless ocean, never to appear again.

Like my Nellie.

She had thrown away her life because she couldn't bear it any more. She had bent to her father's merciless will because I hadn't been there, because she had been led to assume all my promises and all my love had been null and void, that her father had been right about unreliable strangers after all.

What had finally pushed her over the edge, I wondered. Had she given in to a spur-of-the-moment impulse, with irreversible, fatal consequences? Or had she known exactly what she was doing, had she deliberately taken this irrevocable final step, planned it even, because she had thought I'd forsaken her? Thought I would not come back to make good on my promise, to honour our engagement, to save her from a loveless, dutiful marriage entered upon for "decency's" sake?

I had come back just a few days too late to prove her wrong and to ease her worries.

How often had I dreamed of the day I'd return, had imagined how I'd produce the little box and give it to her ceremoniously, making her eyes sparkle with happy surprise.

The box sat on the nightstand in Jean-Luc's spare bedroom, but the ring was in my pocket.

On shore leave in Boston, I had spent my first wages on the narrow gold ring with a bluish opal that would match her eyes. I had planned to give her the ring as a reward for putting up with the long separation and as a confirmation of my promise to spend the rest of my life with her.

I brought it out of my pocket now and advanced to the edge of the monument's platform. The ring, unaware that it had lost its purpose, looked tiny in the palm of my hand, glittering in the sunlight, glittering like the waves below.

I swung back my arm to hurl the small golden band into the water and then simply stood there, stunned, lost, alone, murmuring her name between dry sobs.

It just went to show that happiness wasn't for me, obviously. That it had been so close at hand plunged me even deeper into hopelessness.

If there had been a remnant of trust within me that things would turn out well for me this once, it had died along with Nell.

I climbed over the low enclosure of the platform and scrambled down the face of the cliff, turning towards the choppy sea when I came to a very narrow ledge.

If all I ever seemed destined for was hurting and disappointing those I loved, or getting hurt and disappointed myself, what was I good for? What was I here for?

Life, it appeared, was random and pointless.

I might as well end it here and now, end the futile quest for that ever-elusive happiness, end the senseless hoping for things to improve that was always in vain in the end.

All it took was a leap off this ledge.

Or not even that. Waiting until a particularly strong gust of late-winter wind made me keel over or I got too tired to hold on to the rock and keep my balance was all I had to do.

It would be a safe bet, plunging from this height to either the jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff or the white-crested waves whose undercurrents would drag me down and out in no time if I yielded to their force without resistance.

I wanted to do it, and yet I found I couldn't.

I couldn't even move for a while.

Panting, shaking all over, I gripped a pointed bit of rock eventually and tried to breathe easy until the trembling had subsided enough so I could clamber back up. I managed to take a few steps away from the abyss before I collapsed into a heap of misery, my back against the low wall, my legs drawn up, my forehead on my knees, so exhausted that I couldn't even shed a tear.

Then, five minutes or three hours or seven years later, a hand on my shoulder. I ignored it at first, then I heard Jean-Luc's voice call out, "He's here. Come over!"

Footsteps, a thud as if someone had vaulted the wall, and I slowly raised my head after all to find Jean-Luc cowering beside me and Loïc standing over us.

"Been a bit worried about you", Jean-Luc said gruffly. "You never know what such a thing does to a man, what it might drive him to do. Glad you're still there, mate. Better get up now, that ground's too cold to sit on." He stretched out his hand and I listlessly let him pull me to my feet. "Come, let's get you warmed up."

I was grateful that neither of them spoke a lot on our way to the village or asked any questions.

Back at his cottage, Jean-Luc made hot tea for all of us, pouring in generous shots of rum, and said, "Loïc's been coming here to give you something."

He put two steaming mugs in front of me and the boy who would have been my brother-in-law and retreated into the back of his kitchen-cum-living room, busying himself with the chaos of dirty dishes in the sink.

Loïc pulled a little envelope from the breast pocket of his shirt. "This is for you. It's the only new one we had, but I'm sure she'd have wanted you to have it. So she'll be with you, in a way, and you won't forget her."

"As if I ever could", I said in a choked voice and ran my thumb over a photograph of my beautiful girl, smiling shyly into the camera, her lovely hair loose around her face as I had liked it best. "You sure I can have it? I don't want you to get whacked by your father for taking it."

He shook his head. "We have some other pictures from when she was younger, that's enough. Must be enough. You need to have _something_."

* * *

I said goodbye to Jean-Luc with heartfelt thanks for his kindness. Casting aside his usual aloofness, he embraced me affectionately and patted me on the back. "Goodbye, my friend. Take care. I guess you won't be coming back this way any time soon, but if you do, you know which door to knock on."

"I will, Jean-Luc. You take care too. I'll be on my way now."

And on my way I went, to whatever shore the waves of life would carry me, blowing where the wind would take me.

I wouldn't fight them. I would build a fortress around my heart to protect me from further grief and pain, putting aside any plans or hopes or wishes that would account to nothing in the end anyway, and just go along with the flow to see where I'd land.

* * *

I have always thought that the Mick Carpenter at the beginning of the movie is so much like the man described in Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am A Rock". This is my song for him in these dark times he's going through now.

_I've built walls  
A fortress deep and mighty  
That none may penetrate  
I have no need of friendship  
Friendship causes pain  
Its laughter and its loving I disdain _

_I am a rock  
I am an island _

_Don't talk of love  
Yes, I've heard the word before  
It's sleeping in my memory  
I won't disturb the slumber  
Of feelings that have died  
If I never loved I never would have cried _

_I am a rock  
I am an island _

_I have my books  
And my poetry to protect me  
I am shielded in my armor  
Hiding in my room  
Safe within my womb  
I touch no one and no one touches me _

_I am a rock  
I am an island_

_And a rock feels no pain  
And an island never cries_


End file.
